Sunday, August 27, 2006

I subscribe to Small Press Review, a magazine that is rail-thin but fat with news of the world of the small press. The July-August issue arrived yesterday. Reading it this afternoon, particularly its Small Magazine Review section (formerly a separate magazine), I decide to look up the websites for the magazines mentioned in "Burgeoning Protests," especially Backwards City Review, Nonviolent Activist, and Peace Magazine. Through Yahoo! I find the blog for Backwards City. The August 26 entry excerpts Kunstler's The Long Emergency. For that alone, the blog merits more reading. Then I return to the Yahoo! search results page. The sixth result is a Blogcritics.org review of BCR. The review is a few months old and I'll read it later. What catches my attention is the byline of one Ed Rust, who runs a site called Magsampler.com.

Now my interest is piqued! Not only does Magsampler offer scores, if not hundreds, of titles famous and obscure for only $2.59 apiece, many of the magazines are reviewed. Magazine reviewing is direly underpracticed (I've tried to review some titles for MaggieMedia--now on hiatus--but other things took up my time.) I've never before heard of y'all: The Magazine of Southern People or American Book Review, but thanks to today's perusal of Magsampler, now I have.

Monday, August 21, 2006

According to this press release: "On Friday, September 29, The N will premiere the hour-long season openers of both Degrassi: The Next Generation and South of Nowhere at 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. (ET), respectively. Degrassi returns with the most provocative and intense school year ever, as last year's graduates take the plunge into college, while former classmates Sean and Ashley re-enroll. " The main focus of the blurb, however, is the August 29 release of a soundtrack of music from and inspired by programs (including Degrassi) on The N.

Friday, August 18, 2006

These are links that the reader may still find useful, but that Poppa Zao, trying to keep the link list concise, no longer considers must-reads. Many websites do make comebacks, so links could always come out of retirement.

August 23 update: I moved "Retired Links" to the end of the Links list.August 31 update: I retired the Chesterton quotation: "Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.--- G. K. Chesterton, ''The Purple Wig in The Wisdom of Father Brown'' (1914) (via Wikiquote)

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Normally my policy is to discourage young talent (they only get in theway), but I make an exception for Emily Gordon, who has the elegant taste ofsomeone from a more refined era, when the cocktails and conversation rapturouslyflowed, and a piano tinkled in the background. So the Algonquin was the perfectsetting for drinks and gab, the waiters emerging like Henry James ghosts fromthe dark polished wood in the lobby. At one point she alerted me to a sitecalled The Comics Curmudgeon, devoted to the explication, appreciation, and cheerful desecration of daily comic strips that continue to drift in their own strange perpetual purgatory, like Gasoline Alley and Mary Worth. Now that I've found it, I can't believe I haven't tumbled over Comics Curmudgeon before, given my own low-grade obsession with For Better or Worse and fascinatingly unfunny and badly scrawled strips like Girls and Sports and One Big Happy.

As we approach the first anniversary (August 16) of the release of Lunar Park, the recent news about the terrorist plot foiled in London reminds me of the pervasive terrorist violence described in the book. In a review of Lunar ParkPopmatters notes:

Ellis's alternate reality stretches out much farther than just himself. InLunar Park, he imagines a world where terrorists stage not only big attacks onfamiliar or important landmarks, but also in "...crowded Burger Kings and Starbucks and Wal-Marts and in subways at rush hour".Ellis's apocalyptic vision continues: "Miles of major cities had been cordoned off behind barbed wire, and morning newspapers ran aerial photographs of bombed-out buildings on the front page, showing piles of tangled bodies in the shadow of thecrane lifting slabs of scorched concrete. More and more often there were 'nosurvivors'. Bulletproof vests were on sale everywhere, because scores of snipers had suddenly appeared; the military police stationed on every corner offered no solace, and surveillance camera proved useless."

Fortunately, nothing like the aforementioned has happened (in America, at least) since 9/11, but airport security has been ramped up more than it's been in a while.